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Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, England. His mother was an accomplished pianist and a devout evangelical Christian. His father, who worked as a bank clerk, was also an artist, scholar, antiquarian, and collector of books and pictures. His rare book collection of more than 6,000 volumes included works in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Much of Browning's education came from his well-read father. It is believed that he was already proficient at reading and writing by the age of five. A bright and anxious student, Browning learned Latin, Greek, and French by the time he was fourteen. From fourteen to sixteen he was educated at home, attended to by various tutors in music, drawing, dancing, and horsemanship. At the age of twelve he wrote a volume of Byronic verse entitled Incondita, which his parents attempted, unsuccessfully, to have published. In 1825, a cousin gave Browning a collection of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry; Browning was so taken with the book that he asked for the rest of Shelley's works for his thirteenth birthday, and declared himself a vegetarian and an atheist in emulation of the poet. Despite this early passion, he apparently wrote no poems between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In 1828, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace. The random nature of his education later surfaced in his writing, leading to criticism of his poems' obscurities.

In 1833, Browning anonymously published his first major published work, Pauline, and in 1840 he published Sordello, which was widely regarded as a failure. He also tried his hand at drama, but his plays, including Strafford, which ran for five nights in 1837, and the Bells and Pomegranates series, were for the most part unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologues—especially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbol—are regarded as his most important contribution to poetry, influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.

After reading Elizabeth Barrett’s Poems (1844) and corresponding with her for a few months, Browning met her in 1845. They were married in 1846, against the wishes of Barrett's father. The couple moved to Pisa and then Florence, where they continued to write. They had a son, Robert "Pen" Browning, in 1849, the same year his Collected Poems was published. Elizabeth inspired Robert's collection of poems Men and Women (1855), which he dedicated to her. Now regarded as one of Browning's best works, the book was received with little notice at the time; its author was then primarily known as Elizabeth Barrett's husband.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861, and Robert and Pen Browning soon moved to London. Browning went on to publish Dramatis Personae (1864), and The Ring and the Book (1868–1869). The latter, based on a seventeenth-century Italian murder trial, received wide critical acclaim, finally earning a twilight of reknown and respect in Browning's career. The Browning Society was founded while he still lived, in 1881, and he was awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University in 1882 and the University of Edinburgh in 1884. Robert Browning died on the same day that his final volume of verse, Asolando: Fancies and Facts, was published, in 1889.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889)Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850)Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning (1895)Dramatic Idyls (1879)Dramatic Idyls: Second Series (1880)Ferishtah's Fancies (1884)Jocoseria (1883)La Saisiaz, and The Two Poets of Croisicv (1878)Men and Women (1855)New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1914)Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, with Other Poems (1876)Paracelsus (1835)Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887)Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers (1873)Robert Browning: The Poems (1981)Robert Browning: The Ring and the Book (1971)Sordell (1840)The Brownings to the Tennysons (1971)The Complete Works of Robert Browning (1898)The Inn Album (1875)The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1868)The Ring and the Book (1868-1869)The Works of Robert Browning (1912)Two Poems (1854)

Prose

Browning to His American Friends (1965)Dearest Isa: Browning's Letters to Isa Blagden (1951)Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas FitzGerald 1876-1889 (1966)Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise (1933)New Letters of Robert Browning (1950)Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: A Broken Friendship as Revealed in Their Letters (1937)The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846 (1969)Thomas Jones, The Divine Order: Sermons (1884)

Anthology

The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877)

Drama

Aristophanes' Apology (1875)Balaustion's Adventure, Including a Transcript from Euripides (1871)Bells and Pomegranates, No. IV - The Return of the Druses: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1943)Bells and Pomegranates. No. I - Pippa Passes (1841)Bells and Pomegranates. No. II - King Victor and King Charles (1842)Bells and Pomegranates. No. III - Dramatic Lyrics (1842)Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - A Blot in the 'Scutcheon: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1843)Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - Colombe's Birthday: A Play in Five Acts (1844)Bells and Pomegranates. No. VII - Dramatic Romances & Lyrics (1845)Bells and Pomegranates. No. VIII - and Last, Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy (1846)Dramatis Personae (1864)Fifine at the Fair (1872)Poems: A New Edition (1849)Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871)Strafford: An Historical Tragedy (1837)

Meeting at Night

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

This poem is in the public domain.

This poem is in the public domain.

Robert Browning

Although playwright and poet Robert Browning was slow to receive acclaim for his work, his later work earned him renown and respect in his career, and the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologues—especially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbol—are regarded as his most important contribution to poetry, influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and ...

by this poet

Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.
And strew faint

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth

All, that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with